Note that the below list is a very rough scale; any given character may fall higher or lower on this list depending on context, regardless of what tropes describe him. Many character types are very broad, so the positions below should represent an approximate average; some individual characters are subversions who turn out to be something significantly different from the stereotype of their type of villain.

See also Nominal Hero, for the bottom end of the Protagonist version of this list. See Likable Villain for a classification of reasons why not all villains are vile ones.

Sliding Scale of Antagonist Vileness

The sliding scale is roughly as follows:

Most Sympathetic (the antagonist becomes virtually indistinguishable from the good guys)

Hero Antagonists: These fight for good goals with good intentions (usually), but are still antagonists.

Anti Villains: Their actions are usually evil or at least morally questionable, but they're either fighting for an admirable goal, really ineffectual as villains, don't want to be evil, have a lot of redeeming values, or some specific reason outside their control for being evil. A Type IV here would have the most affection associated with themselves, and can be mistaken as a Hero Antagonist, if they were not previously one already.

Designated Villain is the type of anti-villain that comes about due to writing a "villain" who is supposed to be evil but doesn't do much to show it and in extreme cases may even be the least evil if there's also a major Designated Hero involved. Further Character Development can make them more heinous, of course.

Villains who believe Utopia Justifies the Means tend to fit here, since the world they are trying to create is usually good, but their means of achieving it are questionable or even downright evil.

Harmless Villain: Even though they try to be vile, they just fail to turn the audience against them because of their ineffectualness. Even when they're genuinely evil in terms of personality they're more likely to just be dismissed instead.

Punch Clock Villain usually goes about here, but can move up or down depending on how far they'll go for their paycheck and/or the nature of their boss. A Punch Clock Villain who knowingly and cheerfully serves a truly evil master might well be seen as being utterly amoral even if they personally never Kick the Dog.

Villainy-Free Villain. Even when they're not really all that villainous, they tend to make up for it by being total pricks.

If you're going to Bait the Dog, the reveal of the villain's actual alignment needs to be at this level or below to get the proper 'punch'.

Ordinary Villainy: These do evil things for their own benefit (and their villainous allies/minions) or to advance an obviously evil goal. They'll readily Kick the Dog without any real compunction.

Any villain who is A Lighter Shade of Black compared to other villains will gain more audience sympathy than their opponents, but must be at least as low as this point to be believable as a shade of black on their own.

Least Sympathetic (the audience will completely side against the antagonist)

The Artifact of Doom and the Evil Weapon go here, provided they have a will of their own, although the audience will hate them less than human villains because it's hard to transfer hatred onto an object even when they're full characters.

Permanently Unsympathetic (character becomes completely irredeemable)

Complete Monster — By definition, the least sympathetic character possible. The most despicable of the bunch, and their only goal is to perpetuate their own evil interests. Note that not all characters who cross the Moral Event Horizon are necessarily Complete Monsters; they must have no redeeming values; any of the tropes on the "dividing line" can make them more sympathetic even if they can't be redeemed.

Villains that commit wanton and heinous evil acts simply For the Evulz. Most will qualify for Complete Monsters.

Always Chaotic Evil races are nearly always pure sadistic evil by definition. Most individual members could qualify as a Complete Monster (as groups can't be Complete Monsters, which requires consciousness), although subversions or deconstructions are becoming more common, which pushes those examples out of this territory.

Tropes that can't be readily classified on the scale

These tropes are orthogonal to this Scale, have too variable a position to be located specifically, or are position changing without having a particular position to call its own.

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Variable Position

Due to Good Lawyers, Good Clients, even if the Amoral Attorney is perfectly law-abiding and ethical they often end up being an accidental proxy for their client's vileness if they get justice for anyone on the Ordinary Villain scale or below. Outside of that though it's rare for an Amoral Attorney to personally do the deeds that would even skirt the Moral Event Horizon—they tend to bend the law, not break it.

Big Bad Wannabe can vary a lot due to the various reasons that they fail to live up to their desired status as the main villain. If they're just not heinous enough they are probably Harmless Villains, but if they're just not smart and/or effective enough as a threat they can also be Stupid Evil.

Entities that are Made of Evil can be anything from ordinary villains to Complete Monsters. It all depends on whether they are free to make their own moral choices, or if the setting explicitly makes it clear that they're bound by their nature to do evil (a trait common to many Anthropomorphic Personifications and some Gods in regards to their fields of responsibility).

Given that the Magnificent Bastard is more about style, Magnificent Bastards can fall anywhere above the Moral Event Horizon on this scale, although, again, since he's all about style, the Bastard in question is likely higher on the scale than he would otherwise be.

Mooks can fit anywhere along this scale, but rarely make it all the way to the bottom, since they don't usually represent a serious threat. Elite Mooks accepted, of course, as are mooks seen committing atrocities like mass murder and genocide with a smile.

Offstage Villainy can make even the most wantonly destructive villains more sympathetic than a villain who commits overall fewer but more visible atrocities. The audience will be compelled to hate them more simply due to the rules of perception.

Hatred Effect

Do enough Evil Gloating, and the audience will hate you even more than they otherwise would have for your sheer haughtiness. (Although it should be noted that a stylish enough Evil Gloat pulls towards Magnificent Bastarddom (which may well be up from where you are), and it is only unnecessary cruelty, or repetition of Gloating that pulls downwards.)

Making a villain an Evil Is Petty bastard who holds trivial grudges is an easy way to make them more vile regardless of their other actions.

Evil Makes You Ugly / Evil Makes You Monstrous Due to perceptions of Beauty Equals Goodness, villains whose appearance starts to resemble their inner evil by becoming more ugly or more monstrous (or are ugly to begin with, such as a Fat Bastard) will have the audience root against them more than if they were (still) beautiful. A villain who looks like a Bishōnen is more likely to gain the sympathy of at least some audience members even if it's pure Misaimed Fandom, while a decrepit, inhuman-looking villain has much less of a chance of this happening.

Any instances of Karma Houdini below the center line run a huge risk of accidentally transforming a 'normal' villain into someone even more despised.

A villain that is a General Failure, Pointy-Haired Boss, and/or a Stupid Boss makes weaksauce villains more vile and more blackhearted villains less so — malicious stupidity reduces your sympathy but also reduces your threat, pushing you towards the middle.

If an antagonist is also holding the title of The Scrappy, they can be pushed either upwards or downwards depending on what they're being hated for. Unfortunately even in the 'redeeming' case of this it won't reduce the audience's overall hatred towards them, just the perceived vileness component of that hatred.

Villainous Incest: This can go either way depending on the form that the incest takes. Almost always used to provide that extra shudder factor to an already depraved villain, it virtually guarantees a crossing of the Moral Event Horizon if it's abusive and/or includes rape (e.g. the villain in Chinatown). If both parties are willing and of more or less equal age and power, it can occasionally cross into Even Evil Has Loved Ones (e.g. two primary characters in Game of Thrones).

Orthogonal to the scale

The Villain Protagonist technically does not fall on this scale, as he is, by definition, a Protagonist, rather than an Antagonist. Nevertheless, he can likewise fall anywhere from the start of Anti-Villain all the way down to Complete Monster. The latter, however, is very rare. Placing a villain in the role of protagonist can make for an interesting story, but writers generally shy away from portraying them as irredeemably evil bastards by introducing some redeeming traits or a Sympathetic P.O.V. to balance out their evil acts. This way the audience is comfortable enough to continue to follow them instead of constantly squirming in their seats from the protagonist's boundles heinousness.

Most Eldritch Abominations cannot really be identified on this scale due to their Blue and Orange Morality, even though they are among the most scary entities used in fiction. Rarely genuinely malevolent, they are more often just indifferent towards humanity, and take no more of an interest in its destruction than one might think of stepping on an ant.

No Antagonist is completely outside the scale, as the Conflict is caused by either natural events, society, or one's own flaws rather than other characters. Depending on the source, audience reaction can vary from apathynote What point is there in being angry at a natural disaster, for example? to disgust at the cause of the protagonist's problems.

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